1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in fluid handling devices, particularly for facilitating the manufacture of fluid handling devices having a variety of differently appearing exterior contours or surfaces and/or embodying external ornamental or other features tailored to individual merchandising or consumer preferences or requirements.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the manufacture of fluid handling devices such as manually operable sprayers or dispensers the general practice has been to integrally mold, in a unitary assembly, the shroud or fairing with the component retaining body of the dispenser, as is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,061,202, granted on Oct. 30, 1962 to Tracy B. Tyler. Where it is desired to manufacture, in quantity, identically appearing dispensers, this is an effective cost reducing procedure. However, where it is desired to manufacture a variety of externally differently appearing dispensers, this procedure is undesirably expensive. This is because of the repetition in the molds for the unitary assemblies of the component retaining body as well as the shroud, the latter of which alone provides the desired dispenser differently appearing external feature.
Proposals in the prior art for providing different dispenser exterior contour or surface features have also included enveloping a complete dispenser including the shroud already provided in a further shroud that has been specifically designed to give the desired merchandising or consumer appeal. Such arrangements, however, unavoidably become bulkier than desired as well as undesirably expensive inasmuch as they entail the use and cost of an additional shroud and its attachment to the dispenser.